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Wang Qishan Gets More Propaganda Love; Two Top Generals Missing From 19th Party Congress Delegate List-Sinocism-09.06.17

"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner

Happy September 6…Thanks for all the feedback about the format testing, still ongoing, planning to move more towards yesterday’s approach. But it definitely takes more time and today I have run out so not all of the top eight have it. Keep the comments/tips coming please.

The Essential Eight

1. CCTV Evening News On Wang Qishan’s Inspection Tour And Attendance At Symposium Commemorating the 100th Anniversary Of The Birth Of Former Vice Premier And Wang’s Father-in-Law Yao Yilin

The Details: Wang Qishan has appeared on the CCTV Evening News the last two nights. He looked hale and hearty in the September 5th video of his Hunan tour, a far contrast from the clearly wrong rumor that he is dying of late stage liver cancer in PLA hospital in Beijing. In fact he almost looks like he has recently feasted on a tiger liver…

The September 6th CCTV Evening News report on the symposium for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yao Yilin is very interesting. Li Keqiang gave the keynote speech, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan, Zhang Gaoli, Zhao Leji and Yang Jing are listed as attendees. Li Zhanshu presided over the meeting.

Several family members were in attendance, I believe including Yao Mingshan and Yao Qing. I posted screenshots of the family on Twitter here. Yao Mingshan and Yao Qing are of course at the center of Guo Wengui’s allegations of corruption against Wang Qishan. If readers can name anyone else from the family please let me know.

Why This May Matter: It is hard not to see this as a repudiation of all of Guo Wengui’s claims against Wang Qishan and the Yao family, and a sign of support for Wang. Xi Jinping did not attend, which may lead some to question this guess, but Xi’s consigliere Li Zhanshu presided over the event. What does this mean for the 19th Party Congress? I wish I knew…

2. Two Top Generals Not On The List Of PLA Delegates To The 19th Party Congress

Background: The official list of the 303 PLA and Peoples Armed Police delegates is out. Fang Fenghui and Zhang Yang, rumored to be under investigation, are the only two members of the Central Military Commission not on the list. Wu Shengli, former head of the navy and also rumored to be in trouble, is a delegate, so perhaps those rumors are wrong.

Why This Matters: It may confirm the rumors that at least two senior generals are in trouble, still working on the reports of even more that I noted in yesterday’s newsletter.

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A three-day academic seminar in Shanghai last month brought together some critics, who question North Korea’s value to Beijing as a strategic buffer against South Korea and Japan — and warn that the North could prompt them to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

“The cost is to continue to alienate Japan, enrage the United States and irritate South Korea,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. “If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy.”

“Perhaps it’s time for our three principles to become two,” a senior defense policy maker told Reuters, suggesting nuclear weapons be allowed into Japan. He asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Sinocism Comment: China would go crazy…There is a method to the recent leaks that South Korea and Japan may want nuclear weapons. It has long been mooted as a negotiating card to play with Beijing, along with serious sanctions against tier 1 PRC financial institution(s), as a way to get Beijing to pressure Beijing to move beyond its preferred middle road, can-kicking, head in the sand approach to this crisis.

The Trump tweet attacks on South Korea’s president are also completely self-destructive — sowing the seeds of dissent with a new Korean president who is clearly pro-American and resolute on defense, despite his naïve hope for dialogue with the North. (One cannot entirely blame South Koreans for hoping their might be a diplomatic way out of this nightmare.) Those of us who worked the Six Party Talks know well that when Beijing thinks Seoul is in play, China pulls back; but when North Korean actions are prompting collective security cooperation across the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea alliances, China moves to pressure North Korea. If we cannot get both our major alliances right in Northeast Asia, we have little hope of managing this new threat.

There is a slight possibility that when the risk of war is too much for all stakeholders to bear, they may resort to compromise. We’ve seen that South Korea has changed attitude recently. Seoul indicated that it strongly opposes war in the Korean Peninsula and demanded the crisis to be resolved peacefully. Cracks seem to be appearing in the Washington-Seoul alliance.

Sinocism Comment: Beijing would be much better positioned to exploit any possible cracks in the US-South Korea alliance if it were not so hysterical about THAAD and had not punished South Korea so harshly over it. I have heard from several people that the first briefing Xi Jinping got on the pending THAAD deployment in South Korea dramatically overstated its capabilities and risk to the PRC, but once he banged the table and set the shrill response in motion it is very hard to pull back…

Seoul said Monday that it had cleared the last administrative hurdle to installing four more launchers soon to complete the deployment of the anti-missile battery known as THAAD, aimed at countering the growing threat from the North.

Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie said that China’s rapid response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test was a strong signal that it condemned its neighbour’s continuous and provocative acts…

Li, however, added that the drill was also a warning to the United States and President Donald Trump, who has made repeated threats to stage military action against North Korea.

China Fears Radioactive Fallout From North Korea Blast – WSJ China is amping up monitoring for signs of radioactive fallout from North Korea’s latest nuclear test, concerned that contamination could provoke a public outcry and force Beijing to harden its approach to Pyongyang, diplomats and analysts say.

4. Is The US Focus On North Korea Giving The PRC More Space In The South China Sea?

Doubts over the future of U.S. commitment could leave some Southeast Asian states reluctant to publicly challenge China on their own. The risk is that while the U.S. is occupied further north, China expands its presence in the South China Sea in a way that becomes impossible to unwind, giving it the strategic advantage over time.

“China knows that Trump is very focused on North Korea, and not too worried about Southeast Asia,” said Jay L. Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines. “There is a willingness on their part to push things as far as they can.”

Over the last three months, 21 fishing boats with 136 fishermen of Quang Ngai who were fishing in their traditional fishing grounds in Hoang Sa [the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea], have continuously been chased and attacked.

The objection came just several days after Hanoi bristled at Beijing’s military exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin. China’s announced live-fire drill on the Paracel archipelago in the troubled South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, is a serious violation of Hanoi’s territorial sovereignty, the Vietnamese foreign ministry said in a statement late Tuesday.

Chinese internet users have flooded government social media accounts this week with thousands of angry anti-Muslim comments after unverified videos surfaced online showing an apparent riot by members of a Muslim minority group in a northern city.

The furious comments posted on the official microblog sites of a local police bureau, the Communist Youth League, and other accounts have centered on unconfirmed reports that dozens of Hui Muslims rioted at a highway toll station in the city of Tangshan after a cleric from their community was beaten or hurt in a scuffle.

The Weibo account of Tangshan Public Security Bureau has drawn over 2,500 comments about the incident by press time, with most demanding that the government should not be biased toward Muslim minorities as they believe the authorities are always working for “unity at the cost of justice.” Other Weibo accounts like the Communist Youth League’s also received over 14,000 incendiary comments.

Comment: General Zuo (Tso) Zongtang (Zuo Zongtang – Wikipedia) was famous for crushing Hui/Muslim rebellions…The weibo account of the Communist Youth League posted an explainer about the popularity in the West of General Tso’s chicken dish, a clear dog whistle to stir up anti-Hui sentiment.

6. Air Pollution Far From China’s Only Pollution Crisis

Background: The food chain continues to be plagued with seemingly little progress even after years of exposes and proclamations by the government that the problems would be addressed. The old joke that Beijing should put the Internet censors in charge of food safety because they are so efficient still applies…

Goat Deaths Spark Debate Over Pesticide Abuse – Caixin Global

Shouguang is a major vegetable wholesale hub in China that supplies fruits and vegetables to metropolises, including Beijing and Shanghai. The spring onion leaves were left over after the stocks were cleaned and stored in cold-storage for future sales.

On Sept. 1, the Shouguang city government confirmed on its official WeChat account that the deaths were caused by a banned chemical detected in the spring onions. It said that more than 25,000 kg (55,000 lbs) of the problematic item were sealed and destroyed.

Some 1.45 million metric tons of polyethylene are spread in razor-thin sheets across 20 million hectares (49 million acres) — an area about half the size of California — of farmland in China. Use of the translucent material may exceed 2 million tons by 2024 and cover 22 million hectares, according to Yan Changrong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.

While doctors and the family are busy trading blame over who refused the woman a cesarean section — the alleged reason she was prompted to jump out of a window in the labor room — netizens are calling for Chinese women to be given more of a say on their childbirth options.

Ma Rongrong, a 26-year-old pregnant woman, jumped from the fifth floor of a hospital in Yulin, in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, on Aug. 31, police said.

Hospital authorities say Ma’s family had overruled her request for a C-section and ignored medical advice. But the woman’s husband denied these claims and said it was the hospital that was insisting on a natural birth.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad has come out in defense of its China correspondent, Oscar Garschagen, who on Sunday was accused by his former news assistant of fabricating quotes, interviewees, and other details in his articles. In a lengthy blog post published Tuesday, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Peter Vandermeersch, responded to the “heavy accusations” that he said had deeply affected the NRC newsroom.

What’s Next: I have been in contact with the news assistant, I would expect more things to come out.

Business, Economy And Trade

Chinese premier underlines innovation in economic upgrading – Xinhua During an inspection tour to north China’s Shanxi Province on Monday and Tuesday, Li visited a base for entrepreneurship and innovation and applauded its services to small and micro-sized enterprises and its model that integrates research and development with production.

China’s Wanda Hits Back at Rumors With Lawsuits | Variety “Regarding the malicious rumors that have recently been fabricated and spread with respect to the chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, Mr. Wang Jianlin, Wanda has filed lawsuits against the responsible rumormongers on Sept. 5th in Chinese courts holding the proper jurisdiction,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. “And the courts have accepted the lawsuits.”

Forget privatisation, Xi has other big plans for bloated state firms | South China Morning Post Sheng Hong, a long time critic of China’s SOE reform, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that mixed ownership was “window dressing” to soothe public discontent over the country’s bloated and inefficient state firms. “It’s just wrong to make the SOEs bigger and stronger,” said Sheng, the director of the Unirule Institute of Economics, a Beijing-based independent think tank.

Clouds Darken Over Bonds Backed by Nonbank Loans, Receivables – Caixin Global Chinese authorities are growing cautious toward structured notes backed by nonbank debts and receivables. More companies in China have in recent years packaged their receivables and loans in what the regulators here called “corporate” asset-backed securities (ABSs). As of the end of June, corporate ABSs for the first time took over so-called “credit” ABSs, backed mainly by bank loans, as the country’s most popular asset-backed structured products.

China’s IT, Internet industry prospers – Xinhua China’s IT and Internet industry continued to prosper in 2016 thanks to a better business environment and technological innovation, according to a report of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Total revenues of major IT and Internet companies reached 17 trillion yuan (about 2.6 trillion U.S. dollars), 1.55 times that of the 2012, the latest official data showed.

China Dives Deeper Into Cashless Economy – Caixin Global From April through June, 949.82 trillion yuan ($145.2 trillion) worth of transactions were settled without cash changing hands, up 1.02% from the same period in 2016, the central bank data show. But the volume of cashless payments rose more sharply, up 32.3% from a year ago to 36.90 billion transactions.

Politics And Law

China to Prosecute Activist Over Support For Letter Calling on President to Step Down – RFA Authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan are planning to prosecute a long-term political activist for supporting a call for direct elections to choose the head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Huang Xiaomin was tracked down to a detention center in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, last month, after being detained for more than three months with no notification to his family or access to a lawyer.

Foreign And Defense Affairs

实现中华民族海洋强国梦的科学指南 2002年，习近平同志在福建工作时就对提高海洋意识、深化海洋国土观念作了重要论述，指出要使海洋国土观念深植在全体公民尤其是各级决策者的意识之中，实现从狭隘的陆域国土空间思想转变为海陆一体的国土空间思想。2013年，习近平总书记进一步强调，“我国既是陆地大国，也是海洋大国”。海陆一体的国土意识，将蓝色国土与陆地领土视为平等且不可分割的统一整体，这是我国几千年来国土观念未有之变革，是中华民族寻求新的发展路径的重大战略选择。// Comment China Oceanic Administration Party Committee has a piece in the latest Qiushi on China’s Maritime Supoerpower Dream, credits the 2002 vision of mid-level official Xi Jinping…

Xinhua Insight: Xi sails BRICS ship on epic voyage – Xinhua At the summit, BRICS leaders are constantly reminded of the sea. The logo is a sail in five colors. The conference building, a nearby hotel and the city’s airport terminal are all in the shape of a ship. Xi knows this culture well, as he was Xiamen’s deputy mayor in the 1980s. He loves to spice up his speeches with illuminating seafaring metaphors. On Monday night, Xi invited his foreign colleagues to watch an evening gala, themed “Setting Sail for the Future.”

Chinese navy gets new comprehensive supply ship, Asia’s largest – Global Times The domestically-made vessel, officially commissioned into service last Friday, is China’s first comprehensive supply ship featuring a 4,800-ton displacement, the Cankao Xiaoxi newspaper reported. The Hulunhu will reportedly surpass the Japanese navy’s integrated supply ship as Asia’s largest comprehensive supply ship.

The Truth About China’s Indonesia South China Sea Tantrum | The Diplomat Last week, media outlets began disclosing that China’s Foreign Ministry had sent a note dated August 25 to the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing opposing Jakarta’s decision in July to rename its portion of the South China Sea to the North Natuna Sea. Despite the hype surrounding the note, it represents just the latest sign of China’s well-known and predictable displeasure at Indonesia’s decision to protect its maritime interests lawfully in response to Beijing’s recent assertiveness in the South China Sea.

BRICS declaration may strain China-Pakistan ties: Chinese scholar – Livemint Hu Shisheng, director of the state-run China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said Chinese diplomats will have a lot of explanation to do to Pakistan in the coming months. “How will we carry forward?” Hu also said that naming the Haqqani network, which operates in Afghanistan and targets the NATO forces stationed there, in the document was “beyond my understanding”. “The head of the group is also the actual head of the Afghan Taliban. It will make China’s role for Afghan political reconciliation process more difficult. Or you can say we have no role to play in future,” the expert told PTI.

Images show China’s J-20 possibly equipped with new engines | Jane’s 360 Although variants of Chinese Shenyang-Liming WS10 Taihang engines were used to power J-20 prototypes, the production variant of the aircraft appears to have been powered by a version of the Russian Saturn AL-31FN turbofan, feeding concerns that initial versions of China’s only ‘fifth-generation’ fighter could remain dependent on Russian engines and associated technology.

China Halts Unregulated Online Drama | Variety Chinese media regulators have banned the streaming of drama series that do not have government permits. State news agency Xinhua reported the issue of a circular on Monday by five government agencies. The circular said that Internet drama must come under “archival administration.” It specified that means increased intervention to ensure ideological and artistic merit.

China Keeps It Clean, Patriotic in Scrubbing of 155 Online Videos – Caixin Global A total of 155 online programs that had “vulgar” content were targeted by the regulator, and 125 of which have been taken offline permanently. The remaining 30 will have to be revised before they can be posted again, said Luo Jianhui, the director of online management at China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), on Tuesday.

Would You Name Your Baby This? – Caixin Global A smash-hit mobile video game sweeping China has found its youngest fan to date in a 1-month-old girl in the interior city of Xi’an. But this particular baby girl probably hasn’t learned how to play “Honour of Kings” just yet. Instead, she has formally become one of the first babies in China to be named after the popular game’s original, Mandarin title, “Wangzhe Rongyao,”

Society, Art, Sports, Culture And History

What’s in a Thermos? Some Extra Pocket Change — and Relevance — for Aging Rock Band – Caixin Global bringing relevance back to the aging rock group Black Panther on the eve of its 30th anniversary. It’s also earning some extra pocket change for the band and an entrepreneurial unit of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The saga began when a photo of aging rock drummer Zhao Mingyi, who will turn 50 next month, went viral on social media. The cause of the lively discussion had little to do with the singer’s subdued appearance, in contrast to his wilder days as drummer for a new generation of musicians coming from China in the late 1980s. Instead, the discussion centered on the object held casually in his hand.

China’s Esports Gamblers – PingWest Qin, a self-described “gambling dog,” is a fan of esports, particularly DotA 2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) and CS: GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive), arena combat games favored because of the speed and frequency with which they are played, providing betting opportunities 24/7. In the Chinese online gambling argot these are often referred to, bizarrely, as esports “spinach,” a homophone of one of the Chinese words for gambling, bocai. After four years of gambling on major platforms like MAX+, VPGAME, and Dali, Qin has accumulated six accounts, bet on over 5000 matches, and lost 70,000 yuan, or a little more than $10,000.

Energy, Environment, Science And Health

China’s pollution-ridden province keeps close watch on air pollutants – Xinhua Since the beginning of this year, Hebei provincial environment protection department has ordered several cities to install devices to collect air pollution data, aimed at setting up a province-wide network. Handan, one of the first group of cities to trial the precision of monitoring network, has installed 196 stations for air data collection, said officials with the city’s environment protection bureau.

Homeschooling Still Illegal, Warns Chinese Government – Sixth Tone A notice published Tuesday by the State Council, China’s cabinet, addressed students who don’t finish compulsory education, which in China lasts through the end of middle school. It required schools to persuade parents who want to take their children out of school to study at home or at sishu institutes to reconsider, and to report them to local authorities if they do so anyway. In “severe cases,” parents will be prosecuted, the notice said without elaborating.

Beijing

Quarry that supplied imperial palace in Beijing shut down | South China Morning Post Operations have been halted at the site in Fangshan, a district to the southwest of the capital, the Beijing Daily reported. One villager was quoted as saying that miners had started using heavy machinery at the site in recent years, massively increasing the amount of damage caused. The quarry work had also disrupted villagers’ water supplies because of wells bored into the mountainside.